


Inferno

by bobs coocheth (golfcartjuice)



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Historical References, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24086932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golfcartjuice/pseuds/bobs%20coocheth
Summary: Cast from the ranks of angels that protect humans from medieval forces of evil, Gerard (née Gennadois) has become what they call a Fallen, a near vampiric archenemy of the creatures of light humanity has come to know.Gerard had wanted to exist in debauchery and decadence to forget his past for as long as he can remember. The Fallen race he has become a part of typically descends into madness mere years after their outcast, existing too close to the fickle humans, but Gerard has resisted the animosity in his brain for countless years. The human world's ever-changing quality, one which torments the minds of other angels, is a rhythm he finds so nostalgic, but he now desires nothing more than his wings--his freedom.Born mysteriously in the New Jersey hub of heaven with no recollection of his human life, Frank is sent on a mission: to finally dispatch the rogue Fallen wreaking havoc in the human world. When he is separated from his partner and forced into Gerard's clutches, he must make a choice: to complete his mission or aid the fallen angel in his journey back from the inferno.
Relationships: Frank Iero & Gerard Way
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3





	1. prologue i: until the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This portion of the story contains a few historical events from the Hellenistic Age of Greece adapted to establish a background. These, while being based in fact, are interpreted liberally and portrayed fictitiously.

324 B.C.E.  
ECBATANA, MEDIA  
MODERN DAY WESTERN IRAN

The horse galloped through the sands of Media, its rider pressed close to its flowing chestnut mane. Prayers escaped his lips, flung into the wind like rose petals on a wedding day, and the harsh breeze stole his tears. A town of tents, filled with the members of his cavalry, leered before him, their shadows longer and more baleful than the gates to Hades' underworld. He had left the camp for a moment to revel in the games celebrating the goodwill of the gods for blessing Greece with such victory. If what he had heard was true, that which made him gallop alone across the desert, then there was no such thing as goodwill and that victory was lost to Poseidon's tides.  
"Yah!" he yelled, kicking the sides of his horse roughly, desperate to move faster. It whinnied indignantly and cantered swifter. The wind plastered his light brown curls to the side of his head as they raced even faster to the looming base. White sand blurred into a uniform shade of beige, and even the sky's clouds were left in the dust under the steed's hooves. The horse shuddered with every breath, its sweat stripped away by the biting wind, but every time it attempted to slow down its rider would kick it viciously again and again. The chinks in his linothorax, the hardened linen armor he and his armies wore in the arid climate, let out an eerie whistle as the austere wind passed through it. It was a weak, crumbling sound, one that painfully represented the rider's trembling soul; though he was supposed to be the most powerful leader to walk the earth hitherto, this one event was enough to shake him to his very core. The sound did nothing to settle his abraded nerves.  
His steed gradually slowed despite his proliferating abuse. It let out a low moan and wobbled on its unsteady legs. "No, no, Ajax, keep going," the rider shouted desperately, his hazel eyes widening in fear. The rich, tawny Arabian's neighs of exertion dwindled until they were small whimpers, and it crumpled to the ground, an eddy of white sand kicking up under its large mass. Its ribs swelled in and out as it gasped for air, its nostrils flaring and eyes rolling around in its skull agitatedly. The rider unstuck his sweating, bare thighs from the flank of the majestic horse and dismounted, his hands shaking and white-knuckled.  
He was no longer the Great. He was a mass of nerves and fear and self-loathing. The undefeated conqueror of the mighty Persian empire, reduced to the pathetic rubble of the cities he had destroyed by a mere rumor—how pathetic, to suffer his first defeat at the hands of an incorporeal apparition. But he was not completely vanquished, not so long as his legs could still run. So, he did, for the city of canvas was so close. He was so close. As the man broke into a sprint, the majestic Arabian stallion—Ajax—whickered in fleeting despair, though the sound was again snatched by the pealing desert wind. The Great's legs pumped, his hazel eyes locked on the billowing fabric of the military tents.  
His sandals often caused him to stumble in the pliant sand, so he removed them even in the face of the scalding white sand, and the hot Iranian sun burned down on his neck, but he paid this no heed. He only focused on the tents, which grew larger with every step he took. Finally—finally, thank Zeus—he reached his armies. Past the sound of the blood coursing through his skull, he could hear the clanking of spears and swords, the thrum of javelins hitting their targets.  
"General Gennadois!" A woman called, bowing deeply. Gennadois vaguely recognized her as Erytheia, a healer who patched up a particularly nasty wound to the side he had sustained in one of his first battles. She did not question why he arrived on foot. She did not question his skewed linothorax, or his tunic's dampness, or why he was carrying his sandals in a white-knuckled grasp, or the hysteric expression on his face. He was Gennadois the Great, the conqueror of Persia, a rumored son of Zeus. No one would dare question him.  
"Where is he?" he gasped, pushing his windblown mousy hair from his eyes. She must have seen the sheen of sweat and tears coating his pale face because she reached for a swath of fabric at her belt.  
"Please, sir, calm yourself. The troops have been trai—," she attempted to hand him the cloth, but he battered her hand away.  
"Where is he?" the conqueror asked again, his voice firmer. At her lack of response and the way she stood, unsure and unwilling to speak her next words, he felt his heart palpitate, jumping between the base of his throat and the pit of his stomach. Taking in a deep breath meant to be calming—though he mostly just inhaled sand—Gennadois continued slower. "Faustus. My second-in-command, the leader of this cavalry. I require his presence."  
"Yes, sir, I know of whom you speak," the healer said respectfully. Her eyes darted up from where they were fixed on her shoes and met his eyes. "We thought...well, he is...um..."  
"Spit it out, woman!" the general growled rudely, his patience wearing thin. She flinched, curling in on herself, and her next words were barely audible.  
"His body is in the tent behind us."  
Gennadois blinked, another gust of wind blowing into his back. "What?" he said dumbly. "His body? Faustus is truly..."  
"Dead. Yes."  
A dull ringing consumed his ears. He felt his hand release the sandals he held, though he did not notice them hit the ground. His knees trembled, his plush, rosy lips dropped open, and his hazel eyes were wide and afraid. He did not realize his legs were moving until he was barreling past Erytheia, shoulder checking her into the ground. Numbness spread from his feet to his eyes, brimming out in the form of tears, and it encased his heart in a calcified pall.  
He stumbled through the twin flaps of tent, looking around wildly, tears escaping his eyes like men from burning cities. The medic Glaucius was cowering, head bowed, over the corpse of his best friend. A royal purple sheet, expensive in silk and fine Persian trappings, was laid mercifully over the cadaver.  
"You," Gennadois whispered venomously, striding to the lamenting healer, who looked backwards in terror. His trembling hand bunched in the fabric of his white toga, and he pulled him up ruthlessly. "What have you done? You bastard, you bastard!" His voice ascended into a shrill shriek, and the great conqueror brought his fist into the medic's face.  
"I—sir, there was nothing to be done!" the medic yelped nasally, blood streaming from his crushed nose. Pathetic. Useless. Lily-livered, vacillating, weak. With a roar, Gennadois flung the disgraced doctor out of the way, his anger nearly toppling the tent. Glaucius let out another whimper as he hit the ground roughly, but he was now out of Gennadois's mind.  
The leader focused on the covered carcass. Some part of him was still hoping that the face under the silk was not his friend's handsome, soft face, not the face he had known since childhood, not the face he had trusted his life with. Not the one his soul was drawn to as if by siren call.  
With shaking, spindly white fingers, Gennadois the Great peeled the rich mulberry fabric away. With a wail he collapsed.  
Faustus's unseeing hazel eyes, ringed with the green and gold of the Muse Terpsichore's harp, stared to the heavens. "No, no, no," he moaned lowly, burying his face in his friend's bloodless corpse. "My Faustus..."  
Faustus's curls of umber hair were lank in the low candlelight, and the stench of decay tickled Gennadois's pointed nose. He disregarded it, breathing into his friend's dull auric linothorax. Maybe the tang of sweat or heady scent of musk was still hanging onto the stiff threads.  
Another moan escaped his lips as the oh-so-familiar smell of his friend hit him. His body began to shake, racked with sobs, and the cold corpse lay stiff and obdurate in his arms. "No..." his groan was long and filled with grief. "I did not even get to say goodbye!" How can the world be so cruel? How could Olympus spurn its finest hero? His brother-in-arms had been fine a day prior, and now he lay cold and stiff as ice.  
Over the course of the next two days Gennadois would not be moved, not by the healers' gentle palms nor the grating words of his third-in-command. Not even Roxana, his statuesque, beautiful wife who had hurried on horseback from the festival to be at his side, could budge the mourning leader. Faustus's pallid skin, once ochre and radiant, began to peel away, and the cold, rotting stink of death wove its way into Gennadois himself.  
When the men watching over him saw the first maggot licking at his friend's arm, they gravely stripped him away, despite his kicks and screams that he was to lay with his friend forever. As the soldiers held his arms firmly, he was forced to gaze upon the decaying corpse, finally acknowledging that his Faustus was indeed dead.  
His first steps out of the tent were proud and cold. Despite his skewed, fetid armor and bare feet, he held his head high, not casting his eyes back to the body in the tent. Erytheia nervously hurried over to him, wringing her hands in worry, from the tent adjacent to Faustus's tomb. "Where is Glaucius?" he asked, his voice calm and aloof.  
"He is with me, sir. He feels terribly for what happened to the general, sir—!" Erytheia could not finish, however, for Gennadois breezed past her, tuning her placating voice out. There was only one person he required now that Faustus was dead: the pig Glaucius.  
The tent door unfurled as he stormed inside. Not even pausing to take in Glaucius's stammered questions and apologies, he grabbed the healer by his alabaster toga. "Come with me," Gennadois growled, his heart letting out a painful ache, pounding at the casket that encased it.  
"No, General, I pledge my fealty to you, please do not hurt me!" Glaucius blubbered wretchedly, scrabbling at Gennadois's iron grip. The long, high candles flickered, but Gennadois's resolve held steady.  
"Get your filthy hands off me!" Gennadois snarled, smacking the healer's trembling palms. "You will pay for what you have done." He began to drag the medic out of the tent, and despite the howling bawls Glaucius made, they made good progress out into the courtyard. The men of Faustus's cavalry stood in silence, knowing anything they said to the general would prove fruitless.  
"No, no! I did nothing, General! He died a peaceful death!" the medic wailed, but he could do nothing against the cold frost of Gennadois's anger.  
"You lie to me. His face was twisted, his body was curled like a stillborn child's, and his hands were clenched tight around the sheets," the general's voice turned sour. "You told me he was recovered just a day before! What could have possibly changed in that time?"  
"I don't know! His fever returned; there was nothing I could do! Please show mercy, Your Greatness!" The man was sobbing sordidly, and Gennadois looked on with emotionless distaste.  
An abrupt surge of anger hit his chest as he gazed upon the sobbing doctor, nearly drowning him in its potency, and he began to shake Glaucius back and forth like a bastard kitten. "You will die for your neglect. You will die for your crimes, scum!" Gennadois's voice was lionesque, stentorian and booming, and he made no effort to lessen the chafing of sand upon Glaucius's back and legs.  
They reached a dais Faustus would have once used to address his troops. Gennadois could almost feel his friend's presence beside him, the soft hand that would grip his behind their backs in preparation for a speech, the whispered affirmations that they would be fine. It only made his anger surge higher, and Gennadois blinked back tears as he jerked the man up onto the stage.  
His troops were already gathered before them, having watched their journey across the camp, and Gennadois spoke in a loud, ringing tone across the wide expanse of tents and anticipating faces. "Your leader is dead!" Murmurs spread throughout the gathered crowd; he spotted several shocked and affronted faces. Apparently, news traveled slower than he thought. "Yes, Faustus, the second-in-command to the mighty Grecian empire, an heir to the Persian kingdom, and leader of my renowned cavalry, has succumbed to Hades's skeletal fingers of death!  
"And so, we must rejoice in his life and mourn his untimely passing." Gennadois withdrew a lethally sharp dagger from his belt, dropping the wrists of the desecrated medic. "Move and I will make your death ten times as painful as his," muttered the leader out of the corner of his mouth, watching the man start to crawl forward on the platform. He froze, a feeble whine emitting from his mouth.  
Gennadois lifted a lock of his hair, which had grown greasy and tangled, and shouted out to the crowd: "Let this be a tribute to my Faustus, for I am the Achilles to his Patroclus!" Of course, Gennadois referenced the Greek heroes of Homer's stories, those whose souls were as entwined as his own and his general's. The mighty warrior Achilles had lain a lock of hair upon Patroclus's grave in the latter's death, a morbidly romantic, if odd, notion Gennadois found himself emulating. He raised the knife to his hair, stretching a piece taut, and brought it down. The dagger tore through his dark blonde hair like it was papyrus, like it was Faustus's dead flaking skin—do not think of him. Swallowing a cry of anguish, Gennadois looked to the petrified man at his feet and grabbed him with his free hand. His voice thick with hidden, oppressed sobs, he cried out, "The Great Faustus's grave will be consecrated with the blood of his murderer!"  
"No!" Glaucius screamed, writhing around in the steel grip of the general. "No, I did not hurt him! Faustus—Faustus killed himself!"  
This pushed Gennadois over the edge. He yanked the fearful medic close to his face, spittle stinging the other man's eyes. "Get his name out of your worthless mouth, you rat! I will slit you open and let the vultures feast upon your entrails if you blame my Faustus for his death!" Breathing heavily, he turned to the crowd. "The neglect of this man—no, this animal—caused the death of your commander. Does he deserve to live, or to die?" He ended the sentence in a roar, hefting the crying man over his head. The crowd crowed their assent for his death, banging spears against shields and hooting in bloodthirst.  
"Please, sir, show mercy! An eye for an eye leaves the world blind!" Glaucius begged, watching the general place the dagger on his neck, pulsing with blood and fear.  
"Maybe the world deserves it."  
And with that low intonation, one the whole crowd felt jarring their bones, Gennadois ran the knife through the skin of the medic's throat and into the jugular vein. The crowd hollered for his blood, and Gennadois let his anger consume him, stabbing the corpse a few times in the chest. Blood bubbled from Glaucius's mouth and he watched in wretched silence as the commander cut into his bones and skin. "Oh, did you want a turn?" Gennadois yelled on sudden inspiration, dramatically cupping his ear with a bloodstained hand. His soldiers howled, raising their spears and swords, and Gennadois unceremoniously flung the near-dead corpse into the crowd. The soldiers converged on it like a pack of mangy cats on a half-rotten fish, tearing it limb from limb.  
His hands were thrumming with power and hatred, and he gazed to the sky dolorously, with such misery seeping from his pores that the men disemboweling the medic stopped their bloodlust and turned to face him. A weary scream escaped his throat: "I implore the gods lurking past the clouds: how could you take him, seize him with no chance to for us on your great Earth to wish him well on his voyage beyond?"  
The soldiers and healers and revelers raised their heads to the cloudless, blue sky, their chins tilted in fealty to a power greater than their own. It would have been a magnificent, awe-inspiring sight had Gennadois's vision not been stained a grisly shade of crimson. "I have decided upon an answer, one with which I shall share with you all, those gathered before me in due admiration.  
"The gods are powerless cowards, hiding from the face of the injustice that plagues us. They did nothing to earn our victories, just as they did nothing to stop the death of our beloved Faustus. I, Gennadois the Great, son of Zeus, defeated the Persians, just as I did the Anatolians, just as I will the Arabs! I took upon myself to enact revenge upon the sadist that murdered Faustus! I, therefore, am the only true god!" His voice rose, dripping with the brassy, golden tones of megalomania and self-indulgence. The gathered troops stiffened uneasily, and one of his close advisors stepped onto the platform to bring him away. But Gennadois was not done. "The shrine to the so-called god of healing—Asclepios—in this forsaken city, who failed my beloved friend, whose disciple caused his death, will be smote to the ground by sunup tomorrow!" he cried.  
He was finally dragged from the pedestal, the soldiers once screaming their approval now standing silent and uncomfortable. His third in command spoke reassuring words into the crowd while Gennadois was dragged away into a nearby tent. A cup of tea was poured to calm the frazzled general, and a warm sheepskin blanket was draped across his shoulders. The rest of his ragged locks were shorn by Erytheia until his hair was cropped close and even to his skull, gathered into a pile and braided together to be placed with the urn containing his friend's ashes. Tears traveled down his face like camels bearing priceless gold and salt, slow and meandering through dust and heat.  
~  
The days passed in blurs. Gennadois found himself making military orders for the planned invasion of Arabia in stiff silence, though he had no control over his mind and could not verify the logic behind them. He saw himself beckon the messenger to the oracle, pleading for Faustus to gain the status of a god. Even if his faith had been stripped away, a hanging scab ripped off by the odorous winds of death, his only priority now was to keep Faustus's memory alive.  
He felt that all he did was cry for days on end, and even his beloved wife could not placate him. Her swollen stomach bearing his child meant nothing. The parades and gilded boats he commissioned for Faustus's funeral meant nothing. Even the parchment he found in his old friend's tent, made out to Gennadois himself and detailing Faustus's appreciation for the general, meant nothing, though its sweetly penned words rubbed salt into the festering wound in his chest.  
He ordered the extinguishing of Olympus's flame on the day of his friend's funeral and its lavish, celebratory games in Babylon, the numb fog that had descended over his brain showing no signs of departing. His horse, an unnamed Baluchi that had replaced Ajax after that ill-fated day, meandered slowly amid his personal guard.  
"Gennadois, please," Roxana's smooth voice was dull against his walled brain. "Wipe your tears and raise your head. Faustus would not have wanted this."  
"He did not want to die," Gennadois mumbled, running his thick tongue over his lips, his chained and contused heart letting out an awful ache. "He wanted to live."  
"That may be so, but in his place with the gods he is watching you crumble."  
"The only place he belonged was by my side. And I am not crumbling, woman, I am grieving." Gennadois felt a tiny spark of anger at the unfairness of the world ignite against the cold mist.  
"You have mourned for too long now; his body is mere ashes. Let him rest."  
His head snapped up to take in the dark pallor of his wife: her sharp cheekbones in a rounded face, rosebud lips, and protruding stomach heavy with child. "You have no grasp of what he meant to me. The loss of part of one's soul takes more than a mere few months to heal—and with that in mind, it may never. Allow me a moment of peace! Ride ahead with Kaj; he is always willing to speak to you." He waved her away in the direction of one of his bodyguards, and Roxana indignantly glared.  
"You are my husband, lest you forget, and I am your wife. You may have lost a friend, but in the past ten years of war we have all suffered—many at your hands, no less. Faustus is dead. Please stop this bemoaning nonsense!" Her voice was vaguely jealous, and she crossed her arms over her pregnant belly.  
"I said go, Roxana!" With a scoff, she trotted off on her majestic black steed, and he buried his face in his hands, letting the fog overtake him once again, allowing it to warp his mind into delusions of grandeur and daydreams of his own death, for his silver-winged Faustus would be waiting at Olympus's gates.  
They approached the pyre, which was utterly magnificent, stretching far into the clouds. A melancholy, eerie hymn was sung from the top by a massive choir, and ships bedecked in gold and gilt lined the ornate building. The entirety of Greece's cavalry that served under the fallen general was gathered in the area, heads bowed and spears lowered. Of course, Faustus's true funeral—the one in which his body was burned—had been a much more private affair with only his closest friends and family present, but Gennadois had to make sure his friend would not be swept away with the tide of history—that they would exist together in death as they did in life.  
The proceedings failed to awaken the ambition and motivation that still lurked in the recesses of his being. The athletes competing in Faustus's honor did not stir so much as a want to applaud in his barely beating heart. Even his drive of the funeral carriage was done automatically, so much so that he did not even remember how he arrived at the pyre.  
He numbly walked to where the urn was placed, a few floors up on the pyre's skyscraping majesty. Ornate serpents and gently flickering flames lined the pathway to the carefully embellished pot that held his friend's remains. Gennadois placed the lock of hair he had cut so long ago next to the urn, holding back a stream of tears akin to the Euphrates river. Roxana's soft hand on his back felt so alien in that moment, like she was intruding on something deeply personal, although a thousand men watched the same scene with wary eyes.  
Gennadois turned to the men gathered before him, opening his mouth as if to say a few words, and felt emotion overcome him. His throat tightened as if a rope was choking him, and tears squeezed out of his hazel eyes. "Oh, Gee," his wife murmured quietly, wrapping an arm around him as he looked at the ground, trying to conceal the weak shade of red corrupting his face. "He is sleeping peacefully, now, in a bed of clouds and rain. Do not weep for him."  
Gennadois just turned and absorbed her in a hug. His heart was cracked, a piece of clay pottery that had been stomped on again and again by life's cruel boots, and this final blow—that of seeing his friend's remains placed in their resting spot—shattered it completely. No amount of glue or sap could fix it, lest it turn to a warped monstrosity incapable of even pumping blood.  
~  
323 B.C.E.  
PELLA, GREECE  
After returning to his home in a grassy acropolis in his native town of Pella, the world outside of his immediate family and military officers heard little from Gennadois. The months passed in agony; despite the fog lifting and his cognition returning, he operated under a mask of narcissism, and in private he was broken and dull like an cracked, waterlogged mirror. He began to forget the precise shade of green the ring around Faustus's emerald iris was, how the scattered gold flecks fell through his iris, the way his hair curled at its ends. When he dreamed, Faustus's shape was blurred around edges, and his bright laugh turned corrupted. When he squinted his eyes shut so hard that colors burst through his vision, he could see the smile he held so close to his heart, but even that began to fade with time's cruel tides.  
Locked away for most of his days, his chambers began to fill with parchment and canvas scrawled over with messy colors and words. Some were poems and hymns cryptically referencing his friend, and others were portraits of him or visions the general had in his sleep. He commissioned sculptures of his friend to be placed in polities across Greece and its empire, and he rejoiced as the oracle told him Faustus would be remembered as a divine hero in the light of the gods he no longer had faith in. His wife became distant, intimidated by his obsession with the late general, and she grew heavier as the months passed, their child burgeoning inside her like the ulcer of grief inside of him. Her disapproval of him twisted the knife buried hilt-deep in his chest, for Roxana was his muse, the love of his life, and the bearer of his heir.  
The Arab campaign was looming mere weeks away, and morale had never been lower. His soldiers were growing anxious, their loyalty wavering from their leader's absurd claim that he was the among the gilded gods. Many feared the glorious reign of the Greco-Persian empire would come to a bloody end, but Gennadois simply would not fathom losing anything else.  
He had been feeling sick for a while now and movement had become difficult as his bones stiffened and seemed to turn to stone; perhaps it was that he hadn't eaten regularly in weeks, or possibly it was because sleep brought such paralyzing nightmares that he feared to even blink, though he was often dragged into garish visions by his stuttering health. Maybe his wife's coldness was eating away at his soul, or maybe it was Faustus's eyes gleaming on the papers strewn about his room, watching him as he cried and thrashed about in his bed.  
Roxana's sweet face brightened the darkness of his room one day, and Gennadois struggled to his feet, stumbling to his much-lamenting wife. "My love—"  
She cut him off with a hug—how unusual, being that she had treated him with frosty indifference for so long now. "Oh, Gee, I have missed you so. You spend all day cooped in your chambers! I fret that something is wrong, more so than Faustus's death." Gennadois cringed at the mention of his friend but buried his face in her hair to stave off the encroaching pain.  
"What brought you here, Roxana? Not to say that I am not overjoyed to see the visage of your lovely face," he added hurriedly at her falling expression.  
It did not improve as she spoke. "My—our child is due any day now. The healers told me to tell you that—," she paused, and he heard her breath catch in her pale, slim throat, "that I may die. They aren't expecting both of us to live." Her voice was choked as she rubbed her midsection, tears dripping from the sides of her olive-green eyes.  
"Oh, my love," he murmured, stroking her hair soothingly. Faustus was momentarily forgotten as he breathed in his wife's roseate scent, a flicker of fear stirring in his belly.  
"They say that they cannot..." Her voice began to warp as she talked. Gennadois drew back, blinking and pressing a hand to his ear, as she continued to talk, yet he could not understand her words. She sounded as if she was underwater, bubbles of sound popping in his ears, and his eyes filled with the lake she was drowning in, blurring his vision.  
If he concentrated, he could remember it happening often over the past few days: the awful feeling of losing control over one's entire body and facilities, but the mind remains conscious to realize this and its severity. In truth, though, he had spent the last week mostly sleeping or laying on his soft bed, tormented by night terrors and paralysis, so one day was nearly indistinguishable from the next or the one before.  
Her brows furrowed in concern and he saw her mouth his name. His stomach was roiling; what he had previously thought was fear's effect on his gut must have been much worse. He stumbled backwards, tears leaking from his eyes, and finally collapsed in a heap, crumpling a paper with Faustus's sweet smile drawn on its eggshell surface.  
He remained in a state of comatose calm for six days, and the doctors proclaimed him dead on the first when his breathing had all but halted. He was screaming at the mounting ramparts in his mind to let him out, but he lay trapped and starving, unheard to the world. Every now and again he would hear the moans of doctors and whispered prayers of soldiers begging for his life to be salvaged. Each beleaguered breath was so slow, so painful, and he could feel himself dying in excruciating agony. The pockets of sound stopped showing him his wife after the fourth day of gradual death, and he was no longer able to keep his eyelids from drooping. A baby's cries broke the silence on the last day his ears continued to function, and this brought him more joy than life itself had in the past year.  
Finally, his body gave up. He could hear his heart cease beating within his ears, feel the blood stop coursing through his veins, and his mind—a stag running from a wildfire—became sluggish and exhausted. He thought of his child, as of yet unnamed, and of his wife, most likely dead. He thought of his empire, crumbling without leadership, and of his mother, anxiously awaiting news of his safety. He finally thought of Faustus, who he thought he may be able to see through his red-stained eyelids, smiling his charming smile with wings of silver and platinum feathers silhouetting his face.  
Then he thought of nothing.  
Gennadois the Great had truly succumbed to the mysterious illness plaguing him.  
The only consolation: Faustus would be waiting on the other side.  
Though when Gennadois opened his eyes, there was no Faustus. There was no Roxana, nor was there his father. A different figure greeted him, though, the soft and springy grass wet under his bare feet.  
"Hello, dear brother," a willowy blonde man's soft voice purred, a massive ring of light around his back.  
"Mikolas! Brother, it has been so long!" Gennadois's voice was ripe with emotion, glad to see his long-dead sibling once again, who had died when he was merely a boy. “Am I in Olympus? Have I truly died?"  
Mikolas laughed heartily. "No, my dear brother, you have not." He unfurled his wings, which stretched out for several feet on either side. Gennadois gaped at their majesty, glowing with golden light and shining with illuminated feathers. "You are not dead, and you are most certainly not in Olympus.  
"You are home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gerard's backstory is represented by the life and death of Alexander the Great. I tried to keep his story mostly faithful, but obviously some details had to be changed. I'm trying something kind of different in this story by making the prologues set so far back, but I hope you'll stick with it as it begins to take shape.
> 
> The idea of love transcending time is so romantic to me, and I'm excited to see where my interpretation of it goes over different time periods of character development. A few disclaimers: this is my first fic on AO3 and I have an awful track record of finishing works, but hopefully neither of these will matter!
> 
> Hope you enjoy :))


	2. prologue ii: fall out of grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gennadois, forced into a life of immortality, becomes acquainted with the place he now must call home.

323 B.C.E.  
PELLA, REALM OF GLORY  
"Home?" he whispered, looking at his hands. They were pale and radiant like the moon, and the scars he had accumulated over his ten-year war had been wiped away. He was wearing the lightest of white fabric, a toga of gossamer and rare silk, and a light golden belt cinched around his narrow waist. His pale skin was tight, strong, and muscular, and his apparently enhanced eyes caught the barest of movement in the vividly green grass. Gennadois had always thought Hades's touch would be grievously painful, but the god of death seemed to have taken mercy on the great general. "Whatever do you mean, my dear brother? I see we are in Pella, which is indeed my home, but I don't seem to be...me." He addressed the winged creature standing before him, whom he recognized as his brother despite the two decades they had been separated by death.  
"Oh, don't be silly," Mikolas smiled gently, his handsome, sharp-featured face kind yet distant. "You are the very same Gennadois that you always have been; you have only been reborn." His cryptic words fought desperately to wrest control of the reigns holding back Gennadois's anger. Is a straight answer too much to ask for?  
"My young brother, forgive me, but I am desperately confused. What has happened to me?" Gennadois said pleasantly, disguising his frustration under a sweet smile.  
"You're dead. You died by some mysterious, slow-acting poison. How gruesome," Mikolas smiled, his expression ominous compared to the terrible words he spoke. Goosebumps prickled on Gennadois's skin, which he realized was colder and dryer than he had ever felt it before. "I couldn't bear to see you in the pain you were in. It was poor timing, though, and for that I apologize; I wish you could have seen your daughter. She's beautiful."  
"So you—so you killed me?" Gennadois was aghast, but his brother's grin was reassuringly mild.  
"I didn't, but we sent someone to retrieve you from your miserable life among the humans. We need you here, my brother. Your mortal form may be dead, yes, but your soul persists. Now you exist as you should: uncorrupted, untethered to the world by flesh and bones. You are an angel; the ether runs in your veins."  
"Are many chosen to...to come here? As angels?" His voice was tentatively optimistic despite the shock of his murder, though he tried to play it off casually. Mikolas saw right through him, however, and patted his arm sympathetically with a feather-soft hand. It was freezing.  
"Neither Roxana nor Faustus were chosen. I'm sorry, Gennadois."  
Something inside of him broke. He had been hoping against hope that his death would allow him to exist with Roxana and Faustus eternally. He bowed his head, looking down at the grass underneath his feet.  
"I see the loss on your face," Mikolas murmured gingerly. "I was similar when I arrived. Alone, afraid, a mere child thrust into a strange new world. I have missed you, brother, and I hope I can guide you where I was not."  
Numbly, still staring at the knoll of unnaturally green foliage beneath his feet, Gennadois nodded. Mikolas began to lead him towards a large marble building in the distance. "You should be glad, brother!" Mikolas tried to cheer him up, a hand as cold as the tundras slapping his back. "Not many receive the honor of being personally handpicked by angels themselves. You're destined for great things, dear brother, as you were in Greece." Gennadois was quiet. The way his brother spoke, with a complete disregard for life and human freedom, bothered him. Had he truly been gone that long, to forget the joy someone walking the earth could have, something that could never be replicated in this unfeeling, perfect place?  
"You must still be confused," Mikolas's smile dimmed a bit. "I'll give you a brief explanation, though you may not fully understand until you experience for yourself what I am about to tell you.  
"Creatures such as us are put on the earth to briefly experience life as a human before we are hailed back to the sky, destined to save them from themselves and the awful things that lurk beneath—"  
"What?" Gennadois gasped, interrupting his brother. "What are you talking about, creatures that lurk beneath? Are there other...other places, like this strange realm we're in now?"  
"Of course," Mikolas said, puzzled. "You have lore of Hades's underworld. This is the very same concept. Terrible, terrible races lurk both above and below the plane of your worl—"  
"What kinds of things? What kind of planes?" Curiosity caused his mouth to blurt out another question.  
"Things that will be explained when we finish our walk." Irritation sparkled in his brother's eyes, green with a small flicker of brown to the side of the left iris, and he blew out a huffing breath. "My charge was to acquaint you with this world and explain your death, not to entertain all of your questions that will soon be answered. Do not interrupt me again, Gennadois; please have patience."  
Gennadois muttered a quick apology, and the serene look reclaimed Mikolas's expression. "Right. So, the same oracles who speak to your human gods chose your spirit to return here—I obviously had some sway in the matter, but we all figured it was your time to leave the earth, and your destiny to transcend to us. If someone is to be chosen, they must have done enough good—or have had enough potential, if they lived a short life as I did—to warrant becoming an angel: a savior of the humans."  
Of course, Mikolas spoke of the oracles, mystical priests that humans looked up to as vessels for the voices of gods. It was clear, now that the religion the humans followed―that he himself had followed for his entire life―was a gentle white lie. Gennadois ran a hand over his face, reeling from the news that had completely blindsided him. The gods were merely this...this other, inhuman race, one that Gennadois had suddenly become a part of, and the oracles existed only to serve them. What were humans, then, if this were true? Scum beneath their angelic feet? Little pets to play with and nurture until required above, in which case they would be reaped like he was?  
"I realize this is a lot to take in, brother. If you want to look around instead of talking, silence doesn't bother me in the slightest."  
"No, no; please tell me more," Gennadois said hurriedly. He did not want to look at his sculpted, refined version of Pella. He did not want to accept that this perfect New Pella was now his home, while his Pella existed somewhere else, somewhere below him where he could not touch the grass whose blades differed in length or run his hands over the chipped, beautifully flawed stone sculptures of the nonexistent deities he and his people so revered.  
The halo behind Mikolas flared as he began to speak again, coalescing into lovely, awe-inspiring wings that brushed the clouds in a heady, intimate embrace. "We are puppet masters, dear brother, those that maintain and restore order. We have lived our lives of chaos, of unpredictability, and now we must allow others to do the same. There are many dark creatures below the mortal world, as I mentioned before, that want to cut those experiences short."  
Silence and unspoken questions ravaged the bond between brothers, a pain that Gennadois had to break. Under the flaming white sun that painted everything in an immortal shimmer, his voice was slight, uncharacteristically hesitant. "Why did you kill me, little brother? What need was so great that you had to end my life?"  
Mikolas winced, running a hand through his white-blond hair. "Believe me, I want to tell you, but this is an idea the one I am taking you to meet will do a far better job of explaining. I know you are perplexed," he smiled softly at the stricken look on Gennadois's face, and in that moment Mikolas—whose expression was finally open and earnest—truly did look like the baby brother he'd lost so long ago, "but hold out until he can explain."  
They reached the building, feet coming to a stop on bright white stone. "Who is he, Mikolas?" Gennadois's voice was hard. He had had enough of this foolery, this prancing around the topics they were discussing as if they were explosive geysers. "Just tell me!"  
Mikolas looked almost awkward, composing his speech inside his head, and Gennadois momentarily regretted his harsh tone. "You are going to meet our ruler, the First of our kind. It is traditional for us to know who we are fighting for, and what we are fighting against. In your case, he will explain why we stole away your life." Mikolas's voice, once stiff, turned near reverent, obsequious in the presence of this being's mere idea. Gennadois felt a shiver crawl up his spine, and the horrible feeling of being unknowing and, above all, alone in this strange new world gripped his heart. That frenzy behind his chest returned, one that had recurred for years but especially in the last eight months, and he closed his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts.  
"Are you ready, dear brother?"  
Gennadois just nodded, locking eyes with Mikolas, steely hazel orbs meeting the aloof green, speckled ones of his brother. He turned to the grand entrance, two large oak doors silhouetted by marble pillars, and raised his arms, which glowed with holy light. They opened slowly, an almighty creak echoing through the expansive area within. Gennadois stepped in, looking around in awe. Different-colored panes of glass allowed light of all hues to dapple the floors, and ornate statues with bowed heads and wings covering their modesties ornamented the pathway of red clay tile. A giant, empty throne of glass set on a quartz dais stood in front of him, stretching ten feet into the unlit air. "It's gorgeous," Gennadois breathed, the minuscule noise resonating through the cavernous building, and Mikolas struck his toga-clad shoulder with a cold palm. Reeling backwards in indignation, Gennadois opened his mouth to snarl at his brother, but Mikolas ran a finger over his lips, signaling him to be quiet. He bowed his head, dropping to a kneel, and Gennadois warily did the same.  
"Thank you, Mikolas," a high, cold voice sounded. It came from not one specific place, but from all around the building. The booming brassy tone was earsplitting, rocking through Gennadois to his very bones. "You are excused, my dear. You've done very well."  
Mikolas lowered his head further, a deferential blush on his pale cheeks, and got to his feet with another respectful bow. Gennadois watched his lanky brother exit the building, bemused as to why he had shown such fealty to an empty chair. When he turned back, the throne was filled by an enormous angel, wings fully coalesced into a blinding white scream. Gennadois hissed, squinting his eyes, and tried to observe the angel further. His hair was a mass of brown curls, face amiable yet empty. Dark mocha eyes stared over a prominent nose and full lips, barely moved in a blandly kind smile. "Welcome, Gennadois the Great, to the Realm of Glory." The mere vibrations of his voice nearly bowled Gennadois over, but he managed to keep his footing and re-bow his head in respect. "Mikolas did not enlighten you to my name, nor why you were brought here, correct?"  
"No," Gennadois murmured, letting the waves of sound wash over him before replying. "He said he was only instructed to tell me about what my death was and what this place is. He did not tell me why I was killed, nor did he explain the other planes above and below wherever Greece lurks within."  
"Good," the man's smile broadened. "I wanted to tell you myself. Mikolas might have been too blighted by human emotion to explain correctly. I am not." Too much emotion coming from his brother was the last thing Gennadois was worried about, but he bit his tongue and nodded respectfully.   
The deity continued, "Tell me if I am correct: you are desperately confused. I can see it in your posture, the way you continue to sneak looks of wonder around my palace. You want to know why we ripped you away from your newborn child, and simultaneously why you are cursed to everlasting damnation without your best friend, Faustus. That is the only reason you even entertained the notion of death, and to be stuck in immortality without him is more painful than his loss. You are alone, you are scared, you are angry. I can see all of that and more inside of you, Gennadois. I know you more than you know yourself."  
Gennadois hugged himself, feeling exposed, and scowled at the enormous power looming over him with an infuriatingly compassionate expression. "Then enlighten me if you are so wise. Tell me everything Mikolas could not."  
"Let me start here. You wish to know who cursed you to the enslavement of life, do you not?" Gennadois stiffened, nodding immeasurably, but it must have been enough for the angel. "My true name transcends language. It is the feeling of warm sun warming you after too long in the clouds, the smell of rain evaporating from each blade of grass, the sound of bells chiming through a gleefully empty field. You, too feeble to grasp this, may call me Ray."  
Gennadois gritted his teeth. He was not used to being powerless; he had led Greece to unbelievable victory, admired by countless people even after his untimely death. Ray's patronizing smile was nagging him and his built-up ego, and by the soft smirk on the angel's visage he was very aware of his affect. "Alright, Ray," Gennadois kept the sneer out of his voice with a practiced calm, "why did you kill me?"  
"Tensions between us and the other realms—hold your questions, that is my next topic! —have skyrocketed recently, no doubt furthered by the influx of dead brought about by your war. Though most escape the clutches of rebirth, there are other places for lost souls to end up than here. Other much worse places. If war is to erupt, we need a military commander capable of leading us to a quick, bloodless victory. You are the most acclaimed warrior I've seen since Hannibal, and I was not going to allow your soul to slip through my fingers. Two races are nearing war, and if our diplomats did not succeed in calming the tensions, I would've had to have taken the chance that millions of lives would be lost without your expertise. Please forgive me; this was the best option for the entire system of life and undeath. Your help, if needed, will save so many lives."  
Gennadois thought for a moment. The most selfish core of him was still resentful to this race he was forced to become a part of, but it made a bit more sense. Maybe. And he had never been opposed to uniting two groups so long as it was underneath his leadership; his staunch policy of integrating the Persians and his Grecians and Macedonians had been one of his most stubbornly executed and controversially received. Faustus had been its greatest defender, but Gennadois could not afford to think of him, not in front of the colossal presence in front of him. Shaking his head to rid the memories and squinting at the deity, he asked begrudgingly, "And the planes?"  
Ray let out a breath, buffeting Gennadois with the smell of peonies and light summer rains. "We, the Realm of Glory, are the topmost division of life in this dimension. It is an existence of utopia, filled with winged creatures of light and air and goodness. We protect those who cannot protect themselves—our immortal souls exist to create order. Angels have two forms: immortal, and mortal, both filled with the blue blood of the ether. As we are made of a solid incarnation of light, we resist aging and can live forever. When we travel to the mortal world, however, we must condense this light deep within us, recalling our lives of skin and bone in order to keep our race secret. The human soul is powerful enough to generate organic material, but it takes a toll; we weaken after about a week of hiding our true selves, and we will eventually burn from the inside out. I tell you this to warn you not to leave the plane with the expectation that you can continue your life in Greece. You cannot." Ray took a breath, and as he saw Gennadois open his mouth to ask a question, he held up a perfectly smooth hand. Gennadois snapped his mouth shut in irritation, crossing his arms and motioning for the angel to continue.  
"Beneath us are the Realm of Fate: the oracles. They spin the wheel of destiny, decide the paths of the dead. They are similarly immortal, yet closer to the festering humans below. Beneath them is the Realm of Light. Many inhuman creatures of relative 'good' live here, ruled by faeries—elf-like creatures shimmering with light and ethereal grace. Forest dwelling nymphs, kelpies, mermaids, satyrs—you are familiar with these creatures from your myths and fables, yes? You see, Gennadois, everything is connected."  
"This is so strange," Gennadois ran a hand over his face, heaving out a breath. "You're saying there are—there are two 'planes' other than here and my home? And they all relate to the legends our children grow up on?"  
Ray chuckled, the sides of his dark, almond eyes crinkling with jovial mirth. "There are more than that. Below the Realm of Life, your earth, three more planes exist, the first of which is a dark, distorted mirror of the Realm of Light. We call it, as you may have guessed, the Realm of Darkness. Shrouded in night and bearing horrible nightmares, a dark monarchy—the direct opposite of the light Fae—holds itself at bay. They are similar only in beauty; a wickedness contaminates their souls. You may see some here at the embassies; we are able to hold peace talks between them and the Light Realm. Do not approach them, for they try to lure young angels in with their decadent seduction. No one knows what they do with you once they have you enthralled; we've never successfully rescued anyone.  
"The other two realms are quite similar, differing only in the severity of their evil. The creatures of mud and black tar, too disgusting to dwell in the Realm of Dark and too wretched and stupid to make the bottommost world their home, live in the Realm of Mire. You'll be lucky not to go there; it's a horrible, swampy place that stinks of rotting, festering death."  
"And the bottom layer?" Ray's voice had been getting darker and darker as he went on explaining, and Gennadois's feeble question resounded ominously through the cathedral-like hall. Ray shook his head, as if the creature of light was pained to even speak about such evil.  
"The Realm of Fire. Green, hazy smog and roaring ruby flames are the only things that can truly survive in this terrible place. Awful creatures," he shuddered visibly, the scalding bright of his wings flickering for a moment, "reside there. Kingdoms of ash and castles of bone...I won't speak of it. I pray no one ends up in that terrible hell."  
Ray suddenly clapped his hands together, a biting-cold wind slapping Gennadois in the face. "Now. Please flare your wings, Gennadois; unclasp the light within you and allow yourself the ease of becoming immortal."  
Gennadois gulped, figuring he had no other choice than to comply. Closing his eyes, he searched around in his mind for a bit, feeling quite foolish, until his eyelids flared reddish orange with light. He felt something deep inside his chest shudder and the feeling of wings unfurling—freedom—spread throughout him. He thought it may have been metaphorical until he heard a delighted hum of approval from the angel in front of him. When he opened his eyes, the world was clearer than he had ever seen it, like a cloudy film had been scraped from his eyes, and the weight of two new appendages weighed down on his shoulders. He awkwardly moved his shoulderblades, hearing them flap, and he saw a beautiful, pure-white feather fall to the ground. As he bent to pick it up, he noticed a shimmer of gold on his smooth, airbrushed skin.  
"Well done! I think you're ready to face our world!" Ray's very small, nearly caring smile was back on his handsome face.   
The new angel swept his soft curls of brown hair out of his face, getting to his feet, trying not to stumble from the new burden on his back. "Thank you for explaining, Ray," he said stoically, nodding his head to the enormous angel, and Ray's smile broadened to seem almost real. He would not smile at this patronizing creature. "I hope my time in this Realm is easier now that I know why I was summoned."  
"Of course. You may go," his brown curls bounced as he moved his head, gesturing to the huge door, which opened with an almighty creak. "Oh, wait one moment!" The doors paused their unfurling and Gennadois turned back around, the inertia of his new wings causing him to wobble. "We have laws you will come to know in your time here. If you break them, we will throw you to the planes below us. The oracles will choose where you land depending on the severity of your crimes. Be warned, Gennadois, we do not—we cannot—tolerate anything but order. I hope you understand the gravity of what I am telling you, for this is the most important thing you will have learned." Not wanting to be treated like a child, Gennadois agreed solemnly and turned his back to the angel, facing the doors that began to open one more. He heaved out a breath as he made his way into the luminous, synthetic sunlight, the familiar fluttering of fear and insanity tickling his heart, but at least the unknowingness he had felt earlier was gone.  
Now he was merely alone.  
~  
320 B.C.E.  
PELLA, REALM OF GLORY  
The brown-haired man swore as he hit the grassy ground roughly. The chafing rope bonds securing his arms together dug into his wrists as he tried to break his fall. He landed gracelessly, shooting a hazel-eyed glare behind him, one that quickly morphed into a grin holding a desperate type of insanity. Giggling mirthlessly to himself, he blew a strand of wet, mousy hair from his face, aware that the white toga he was wearing had ridden down to expose his lean, pallid chest. He would be lovely—fittingly angelic—without the glint of panic in his morphing eyes and white-toothed smile. "You would not really cast me out," the man licked his lips quickly, sweat dripping down his face. The inhuman grin was plastered to his face as he stared up at the man who had forced him to his knees. Mikolas.  
He was tall and lithe, vulpine and proud, radiating a calm sense of anger. His soft hair was a regal platinum blonde, and the aloofness in his eyes faded to allow his lividity to show. The two men's faces bore resemblance to one another, dulled by age and difference of opinion but still striking in similarity. His words, sharp in their infliction, were no match for his incensed expression. "I would," he snarled, "and you will watch me on your fall."  
"Mikolas," Gennadois gasped, the manic smile fading when he realized the gravity of his situation. The name slid off his panting tongue harshly, like he had spat out the hard consonants. "What-whatever you've heard, it is untrue. You know me. I am your brother."  
"Were," he hissed quickly, recoiling as if he had struck him. Mikolas, who died in early childhood, had not lived long enough with humans to truly experience the emotion that had corrupted whatever soul was left inside of his brother. "That died with my trust in you. You have broken the oath you took when you joined our ranks, Gennadois, and you know what that means for you."  
"No, no," the former general moaned, scrabbling at his feet. His wings, previously furled at his back, were flapping back and forth in distress, purely white feathers spiraling to the ground. "Please, I did nothing. I—it was a lie, Miko, please do not do this!"  
"Who am I to believe?" His voice was tortured—his whole face of sharp angles was a Hellenistic sculpture of self-doubt and betrayal. "Do I take the word of the entirety of our—my race, pointing their fingers at you, or a traitorous bastard who risked all we are for his own selfish desires?"  
"Ah, but you know this traitorous bastard. Whatever they said I did, I did not. I swear to you, Mikolas, I would never put your life in jeopardy." Serious earnestness flooded his expression, and Mikolas stepped backwards on the idyllic hummock they were standing on. He stared at the pastel blue, empty sky as if searching his maker for answers.   
His lack of response clearly made his brother nervous, and he wiggled forwards, trying to get to his knees. "You-you need me! The peace talks may falter, and what would happen then, ah? You would risk everything for one discretion?"  
"You could have exposed us entirely!" Mikolas snarled, but his heart was somewhere else. The time he spent with his brother over the past years, whether mortal on the ground to protect the humans or immortal in the Glory Realm relearning each other, affected his mentality. The angel below him was still fiery and passionate, not allowing the structured, cold world around him to strip his feelings like they did to so many others. It reignited that sentiment within him, and he had not felt so alive since he was, well, alive.  
"Please," Gennadois begged again. Somehow, he had wrestled his bound hands in front of him, with no shortage of pain in his shoulder, Mikolas presumed, and his fingers scratched at his brother's gold-sandaled feet, desperation making the innocuous movements painful.  
"I cannot." His head bowed, he reached a long-fingered hand for his brother's arm, wings drooping behind him in defeat. He caught a glimpse of Gennadois's gaze—it was not shocked, but jubilant, that manic glow he had barely stifled back within his pupils. At this moment, as he heaved him to his feet under the scorching sun, Mikolas knew his brother was lost. Whatever had corrupted him before he had been saved by the angelic realm had furrowed too deep within him, reactivated by his brief trip down to the fourth plane. "I cannot let you live."  
"What?" His voice turned from honey to a caustic poison, and he felt that aloof center he had worked so hard to leave behind hammer itself back into place.  
"You will be cast down to the mortal world at sundown tonight. I cannot bear to look at your face when you crash to the earth."  
"Mikolas, no—," he cut off, running one of his bound hands through his damp, oily brown hair. The warmth of the sun did nothing to thaw the cold, angry expression on his face. He had wanted to believe his beloved brother was sane, but the emotional façades he plastered to his heart belied that assumption. They would be better off without him.  
"Do not speak to me until you are sentenced. You are no longer my brother, but an impostor wearing an angel's cloak." His voice wobbled in a very uncharacteristic move, and he shook his head in grief for the man that was once his sibling. The stony wall of Gennadois's exterior crumbled, tears tinted blue spilling from his lovely hazel eyes.  
"Mikolas, please," he whispered. "I had to...I had to go back..."  
"Quiet." Mikolas snapped his fingers, and the ropes around his brother's wrists glowed with ethereal light. Gennadois hissed, eyes squinting from the terribly brilliant light, and Mikolas nudged his finger, allowing a band of white to stretch across Gennadois's face. His brother's screams were muffled by the incorporeal, scorching gag, and Mikolas waved another hand, the smidgen of Ray's power bestowed upon him allowing Gennadois to float, wriggling above the ground like a witch's worm above a cauldron. Mikolas surreptitiously wiped a hand at his eyes as he turned away, leading his brother to the cathedral where Ray lurked.  
~  
The sun glowed orange and scarlet, its intensity persisting despite the fact that half of it was submerged beneath the horizon. Gennadois was glaring spitefully from behind a cage of light, and Mikolas and several other angels stood beneath a glowing portal in the ground. It swirled with celestial shades of purple, heliotropes dancing with amethysts and lilacs, and glimmered with stars and the blue swirls of galaxies. "Brother, you've broken the most important law given to you," Mikolas murmured regretfully, waving a hand to dispel the gag and cell of light.  
"Where is Ray?" Gennadois sputtered out immediately. "This isn't fair, he has to decide this—"  
"I spoke to him. He doesn't want to look at you, so the responsibility falls upon me," Mikolas snapped. "Ray agrees completely that you deserve this and more. I hope your fall hurts, dear brother."  
Shock flew through his bronze gaze, and Gennadois let out a wail as the angels flanking Mikolas moved to push him through the portal. "Please, baby brother, don't do this, I beg of you," Gennadois implored desperately, wrestling in his bonds. "Give me a chance! What if there is a war; who will you turn to?"  
"The final treaty was signed today!" Mikolas snarled. "You wouldn't know, since you were down frolicking with the humans!" Gennadois bowed his head, sweaty, ash-blonde hair falling into his handsome face, and he blew out a shuddering breath.  
"I'm sorry," he whispered wretchedly, voice cracking and broken, and the shell of psychopathy released its foul grip on Gennadois's expression. Mikolas saw his truthfulness, but that could not change the past, nor would it erase the carnage his brother caused. He was not meant for the world of angels; he was too unpredictable, too emotional, too prideful. So Mikolas turned away, an aching, pummeling wave disrupting the tranquil sea usually found within his chest.  
Gennadois teetered on the edge of the portal, looking into the blank faces of the angels he had come to know. They did not seem reluctant to push him forwards, into the swirling abyss, and he scowled. He had heard stories of the fallen angels that had survived their descent into the hells below, heard that they had gone insane and ripped themselves to pieces, and that was not how he wanted his life to end. He did not want the last clear image in his mind to be his brother, hunched and pained, his face turned away like Gennadois was far too shameful to gaze upon. "Mikolas!" He called hoarsely, despairing, startling his brother.  
Mikolas's face crumpled as the angels began pushing harder against Gennadois's winged back. "If you come back—make it back here, and I will ensure no harm comes to you!" The young blonde angel stammered, his golden-tinged wings flapping in distress. Gennadois nodded wildly, eyes locked with his brother's, and he felt the world drop out from under him as he plunged through the gate.  
His ears popped, eyes rolling around in his head, and his stomach flipped up to his throat. He let out a wail of fear and agony, unfurling his wings to try and stop the sky's tearing, groping hands from slamming him to the hard ground. The smell of burning feathers tickled his nose, and he retched, fluttering the appendages attached to his back. He steadied his eyes, trying to focus on his surroundings, but the sky rushed by in hues of navy, silver, violet, cobalt—he could not keep up with the blur of motion and shut his eyes again. Another feeling of being underwater for far too long took over his senses. All he could think was that he had passed through the Realm of Fate, and he dimly recalled Ray's words: "The oracles will choose where you land depending on the severity of your crimes." Was what he did so terrible to land him below Earth? His impact would hurt, but he was immortal, it surely could not kill him. If he could land and be with his daughter...  
Gennadois flapped his wings again, ignoring the intensifying pain in his wings and the terrible smell of burning. Maybe he could slow down—the sky was now a deep mauve, mixed with flares of green and cyan clouds, and he could make out a bit of what he was nearing. The Realm of Light was shrouded in darkness, and its people slept in their quaint houses and luxurious castles, blissfully unaware of the angel tumbling from the sky.  
Whoosh. Another dunk under the ocean spat him home. Earth's twinkling stars winked sardonically, and the moon's taunting, mocking grin gave him more strength to flap his wings again. He was now flipping around in circles, a hopeless attempt to stall his momentum, but he could not seem to move from the vertical path he fell down. Tree branches slapped his face and he curled his wings inward to his face. The feathers, the beloved alabaster plumes he so adored, were beginning to stain midnight black, creeping upwards like ink through papyrus.  
His yell of shock and anguish was snatched away by the next portal. The change was immediate; instead of freezing air whipping through his clothes and scalding his wings with a terrible, icy burn, hot and humid winds snatched at his toga. Real fire licked at his wings from towering torches above nightmarish castles, and Gennadois hummed in fear, his wings jolting involuntarily. The Dark Fae sentinels watched warily as the damned angel plummeted down, down, down.  
Another whoosh. He gagged on the mere stench of the next Realm. Burps of gas from deep within the earth singed his upturned, running nose and scalding geysers erupted high into the green, smoky sky. Gennadois could hear the wails of the dead and the similarly damned, pleading for his help, though it was plain that he could not even help himself. He so desperately wanted to land here; even its disgusting sludge could not be worse than the next Realm—  
The next sensation of popping and constriction was the worst by far. A deep maroon-crimson sky glared at him with eyes filled with hatred, clouds of black ash coughing disdainfully upon him. His wings were entirely black now, their feathers stiff. He knew they were broken by the pain he felt and his near inability to move them, but he could not think about that, not when he was falling through the most terrible place he could have ended up. A dull roar echoed across the plains of magma and rock, and he let out a whimper of dread, blue tears streaming from his eyes filched by the cruel, biting wind.  
Smack. His back cried out in agony as he hit an enormous puddle of stinking tar. Gennadois's brain racked in his skull and he blacked out, death greedily grasping for his consciousness, but he dragged himself back into his body. His breath came in terrified gasps, and his vision blurred with pale blue tears. "Aahh," he moaned in excruciating pain as the burning tar licked at his arms, nearly sentient in its movement. The tears leaking from his eyes turned as black as the liquid he was suspended in.  
Sleep, the tar whispered. Sleep. You have earned it, dear Gennadois. He shook his brown-curled head even as the tar submerged his struggling, agonized body. Gennadois squeezed his eyes shut, holding his breath. His reign could not end like this, he could not die like this—  
Sleep to live. Let me take care of you. Its sickly voice caressed his ears, which were already filled with oily muck, and he could not tell if it was a figment of his strained imagination or not. I will take care of you...sleep, now, you deserve to. Gennadois coughed out a sob. There was nothing else he could do, and if there was a chance that some awful creature decided to take pity on him, he knew he had to take it. There, there...I swear you will wake again.  
Until then...  
Welcome to the Inferno.


	3. come angels of unknown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thousands of years into the future, an angel appears in the Realm of Glory with no recollection of his past or himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say this is my experiment to get back into writing since I've been struggling with depression for the past few years and it's severely damaged my motivation, but I'm going to work on this fic and myself no matter how long it takes! By the way, I'm kind of a slow-burn type of writer, so while this might seem boring right now it'll heat up soon!
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)

2007 C.E.  
REALM OF GLORY, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY  
He woozily opened his eyes. His skull was pounding, throbbing like a festering wound, and the terrible white light did not help matters. Someone blocked it out, a thin, lanky silhouette with hair nearly as white as the luminous sun blinding him, and the man could see a barely corporeal smile on his sharp features. "Welcome," he said brightly, his tone just amiable enough to convince the man to shade his eyes and focus. The person standing before him was a bit odd—sure, his square jaw, bright blonde hair, and emerald eyes looked normal enough, but the strange manner he carried that was somehow a cross between aloofness, affability, and narcissism set the other off almost immediately. The strangest thing, though, was the pair of enormous wings shrouded in a veil of holy light hovering around his back. "What is your name?"  
"My...name?" Speaking felt strange to him, like his tongue was made of thick sandpaper, unwieldy and awkward. The man saw him blink slowly, confusion dawning on his features, until he bent down to look at him.  
"You don't remember your name?"  
"I...I don't have a name," the man replied to the shocked question. "Am I supposed to?"  
"Yes, of course, child; my name is Mikolas. Do you remember anything?" The winged man's voice was sweet, and the other enjoyed its different tone. It was a bit awkward for something as graceful as he, sounding somewhat clogged and careful, like he had gotten over a stutter simply by focusing.  
At the prompting raise of a thick eyebrow, the newcomer stammered, "N-no—where am I?"  
Mikolas laughed slightly, placing a terribly cold hand on his toga-clad shoulder. "One thing at a time. If you have no name, we shall have to make one. What do you want to be called?"  
"I don't know! I have nothing to go off of!" The man rolled his eyes, throwing his hands up in frustration. "If you're so smart, what do you think?"  
"Hmm..." Mikolas considered for a moment. "Well, you're quite blunt, aren't you?"  
"I'm just trying to be frank with you," the man muttered. It sounded like an insult by the way he phrased it, and the man did not think he enjoyed the winged creature's voice so much anymore. Mikolas rolled his green eyes, then his angelic face lit up with an idea.  
"There it is, then! Your name is Frank."  
"Wha—really?" The man, Frank, scowled. "That seems like a stupid idea." It was just a word he had said—it had no meaning at all! —and if he was indeed going to exist, he thought the choosing of his eternal title should be more solid than that.  
Mikolas smiled patronizingly, "Yes. You look like a Frank anyways." At the floor-ridden man's skeptical glare, Mikolas spread his arms wide. "Well, do you have any better ideas?"  
Frank's frown deepened, and he glared at the winged creature staring down at him. "I...I guess not."  
Pausing for a moment, Mikolas nodded decisively and offered a hand to help him up. "Frank it is, then. Welcome to the Realm of Glory."  
"Thank you, Mikolas," he groaned, flinging a hand over his face. Frank. Hmm. He decided he liked that name—it was short, concise, and the pop of the 'k' threw in a bit of spontaneity.  
Frank. Him.  
He clasped Mikolas's extended hand and hoisted himself to his feet, stumbling forward as he regained a sense of balance. "I'll show you around."  
Frank listened less to Mikolas's tour and more to the buzz of activity around him. Everyone was inhumanly beautiful, walking around on feet made of clouds and skin shimmering with the light of the sun. He looked down at his plain white toga and pale, unremarkable hands, strands of umber hair falling in his eyes, and focused on the cracked asphalt beneath his unremarkable self. He didn't belong here, did he?  
Someone put a hand on his shoulder. "Look, Frank," Mikolas guided his head back up with the other hand, allowing him to gaze upon a beautiful open-air market buzzing with activity. Frank looked around, confused—the rest of the area was a congregation of high-rises, brick buildings and a silent series of roads and traffic lights. The billowing white cloths of the tents and the stark contrast of spring-green grass and dull gray street made it look extremely out of place. Maybe he did belong after all—a wry thought, but one with merit. "This is the agora. It's the best place to get a feel for our realm." Marble pillars strewn with vines of ivy bordered the lovely marketplace, whose white-tented stalls were occupied by smiling angels selling all sorts of effects—clothing, weapons, and one that sent a thrill through him: ink.  
The central square was humming with voices, a harmonic din of joy and kinsmanship. Frank relaxed at the atmosphere, and he knew then that, even if he was not supposed to be here, he would belong as well as he could. Mikolas led him down the marketplace, introducing him to angels of all creeds and histories. The longer he spent in the agora, the more understanding he discovered for the race he had become. The angels were kind and warm, and Frank felt a deep sense of loyalty to the place and its people already.  
A woman knocked into him as he inspected the ink booth's contents. Mikolas had finally left him to his own devices, so the first place he went was to this somehow alluring stall. "Oh, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed prettily, a British accent turning her words dainty.  
"No worries," said Frank, who was in a splendid mood and was not prepared to let anything throw him off. He turned away from the walls of designs and observed her: she wore a long, royal navy dress that flared out like a bell, its heavy material made of rich satin. Her waist was tightly cinched with a tied mechanism, and her sleeves were wide and billowing. The wings behind her were almost transparent, a light lilac tint to their dainty, thin feathers tied with fancy satin bows.  
She smiled gently, extending a hand clad in long drapes of silk. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Jamia."  
"Frank," he grinned, staring at her delicate hand. She giggled, the sound like tinkling bells.  
"Come now, Frank; don't tell me you've never shaken someone's hand!"  
Frank blinked. Her thin eyebrows rose, and she grabbed his hand, moving it up and down. "My, my, you have a lot to learn, don't you! Where've you been the past, oh, two thousand years?" He shrugged dumbly, keenly focused on her hand clutched in his, with its fine shapely nails and butter-soft skin that seemed to hide an ethereal glow beneath. His own looked almost dirty in comparison, though he'd touched nothing, and he cringed at how rough it was, so much so that it seemed like he could rip Jamia's lovely porcelain skin away and expose her no-doubt perfect bones.  
"So, what, are you just looking at the designs, or are you going to get one?" Jamia grinned, withdrawing her hand smoothly. Frank stared at his own still-extended limb and distractedly lowered it, bringing his gaze up to meet hers.  
"What?" he ran his tongue over his lips, overwhelmed by sensation. His mood was still a bubble of happiness and tentative belonging, but everything was beginning to hit him at once, and Jamia’s direct interaction had, as gently as she spoke, shoved him off the edge. Jamia repeated her question, this time her voice full of amusement, and bowing his head, he replied, "Oh, uh, yeah; I'd like to get one, but I don't really have any ideas."  
Jamia's expression turned thoughtful, a pondering hand draped in silks coming to rest on her chin. Frank couldn't stop staring; Mikolas had been a handsome man, so much so that it was clearly an anomaly, but once he saw someone as beautiful as Jamia, he realized that everyone was like that. Handsome, beautiful, utterly flawless; skin ripe and soft, mouths harped and full, wings gently flapping with perfectly symmetrical feathers on proportional bodies. Except for him, of course. He felt the wings behind him, but they were awkward and unwieldy. His body was scrawny and short—Mikolas had towered over him, statuesque not only in beauty but in height. He had no mental image of what his face looked like, but if it was as simple as his pale, dull skin, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Turning his gaze back to Jamia, he resisted the urge to scowl at her unfairly beautiful, pensive face, which suddenly lit up with an idea. "You could always tattoo my name on you," she grinned, a mischievous glint in her warm, glowing brown eyes.  
"Are you serious?" Frank laughed, the sound coming out a high, breathless giggle.  
"Of course, don't be lily-livered! You do it and we'll be friends forever," Jamia teased in a singsong voice, resting a hand on his arm. Frank reddened, reluctantly nodding, and she gasped. "Really? Frank, you don't have to!"  
"No, I want to," he nodded firmly, as if reassuring himself along with her. "Besides, I want as many as humanly—well, I guess inhumanly—possible." Maybe exotic swirls of ink on his unremarkable skin, that which did not seem to gleam and glitter like the other angels', would disguise his very banal appearance.  
“Well, don’t cover that pretty face of yours,” Jamia patted his cheek affectionately. “I like tattoos in other places, though.”  
Frank flushed, turning away to disguise his ruddy cheeks, coming face to face with the stall owner, who had appeared just inches away from him. Tilting his head up, Frank was disappointed to observe another beautifully featured angel. The man’s swarthy skin was bejeweled in ink: intricate animal faces, ancient symbols, and faces that looked as if they were staring directly through Frank. His wings were powerful, scraping the saturated blue of the sky with their yellow-tinted feathers. It was as if God himself had shaped these beings with his own hands, molding them from clay into the perfect specimens of near humanity. Frank thought he’d been made by an entity far less grand.  
Jamia came up behind him, looping a thin arm around his waist, and smiled at the man. “Andre, darling! This is Frank; he’s going to get my name tattooed!”  
Andre, who was wearing a long trenchcoat, high waisted, baggy pants, and shiny brown loafers, rolled his deep black eyes. “Jams, you still bringin’ these old yucks here to ruin their immortal lives?” Andre leaned in to talk conspiratorially to a bewildered Frank. “Listen here, buddy, this stuff’s permanent. Ink I’m usin’ ain’t cheesy, neither; it pervades your soul and leaves a permanent mark—otherwise, every time an angel went down Earthside on a job they’d have to get their tats redone!”  
Frank didn’t know how to respond, but Jamia whined, admonishing Andre with her finely shaped hand. “Leave him alone! I don’t want to ruin him, look how delightful he is! And he’s not like those other idiots, either. Frank is lovely.”  
“Ah, Frank, eh? Like Ol’ Blue Eyes? I knew that old wheel. Was a lot fruitier than people’d imagine, but I s’pose that wasn’t a problem for me!” Andre put a gloved hand on Frank’s shoulder and jostled him around a bit, the gesture full of camaraderie. “What about you? Thoughts on the Sultan of Swoon?” Andre tilted backwards dramatically, causing a tinkling giggle to erupt from Jamia’s mouth.  
“I—I don’t…know what you’re talking about,” Frank scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, cringing at the silence that followed. Andre’s previously friendly expression closed off, a suspicious light in his eyes.  
“What do you mean? You don’t know Frank Sinatra?” Shiftily, Andre turned to Jamia, whose grip tightened on Frank’s side. The newcomer angel stared between them, aggrieved at the effect of his simple unknowing. “Who is this turkey, Jams?”  
Frank crossed his arms over his chest. Sure, he didn’t have a clue what slang the man was saying meant, but he could tell he was being insulted. “Enough!” Jamia snapped. “He’s new, I told you!”  
“Get out of here! Like hell he’s new. He’s wearin’ those togas the snobby philosophers have! Nobody new’s shown up with those for a thousand years!”  
“Look, Andre, I’m not sure how I died,” Frank interrupted, holding up a hand. “I don’t even know what my life was. But I woke up in this strange place I don’t belong in just a few hours ago, and when I saw your booth, the first thing I knew I wanted was a tattoo. Maybe to commemorate my arrival, the luck I somehow stumbled upon, I don’t know. I’m not sure who—or what—you think I am, but I promise you all I’m here for is some ink. An-and not necessarily of her name.” He tried for a smile, and somehow, he knew his past—or, rather, lack of one—would cause him much more trouble than this in the future.  
At Frank’s earnest expression and Jamia’s fiery, defensive brown gaze, Andre reluctantly stepped back, a tense smile on his wide lips. His eyes darted between them nervously. “Ah. Well, you’re missin’ out. Sinatra’s stuff’s a real ball. So where are we thinkin’ for the tat?”  
~  
Clumsily retying the toga over the wrapped tattoo of Jamia’s name on his chest, Frank stood up, gingerly extending his hand for Andre to shake. With gusto, the tattoo artist obliged, fixing him with a contrite look. “Apologies for earlier, man. I fought in both the Great Wars; that’s probably why I was chosen to be here. Saved a lot of guys, but I got stabbed in the back once or ten times. It’s hard not to be suspicious when every other guy you meet’s a Nazi or just another G.I. out to save his own skin.”  
Frank offered a sympathetic nod, though he of course had no idea what either of those two terms were. He internally scoffed; maybe a trip to the library was in order. After a few parting words of thanks, Andre’s assurance that Frank could come back any time, and another recommendation of Frank Sinatra’s music, the newly tattooed angel left the stall. Jamia was waiting outside, her hands properly clasped in front of her, and Frank was once again in awe at her beauty. Highlighted by the golden sun which neared the horizon, the angles of her face were highlighted a bright olive, and its dappling light turned her eyes gold.  
“Are you happy?” she asked excitedly, bobbing up and down, and he grinned.  
“More than.”  
“Lovely! Oh, Frank; I’m so pleased to have met you!” She moved forwards to press a chaste kiss to his cheek, and Frank flushed, an abashed smile on his lips. “Now, Andre was right about one thing: this toga is awfully dated. I know a splendid place to find some new clothes if you’re uncomfortable in these.”  
Frank looked down at the soft swaths of lovely white fabric. They were fine and airy, like clouds on his skin, yet they didn’t feel right. No, he wanted something…grimier. Grungier, more fitting to someone of his station. What that meant, he didn’t know, but he could tell that the philosopher’s toga was not who he was. “Let’s go, then.”  
Taking his hand, Jamia led Frank deeper into the city of his new home, the supposed pinnacle of existence: heaven.  
~  
PRESENT DAY  
PELLA, REALM OF GLORY  
Jamia rarely looked nervous in the years Frank had known her. Her face was always at least schooled if not bright with laughter and mischief, but in the central hub of Heaven, standing in front of those ancient wooden doors harboring God, even she looked terrified. Frank himself couldn’t stop wringing his hands, the silver wings on his back that he still wasn’t entirely used to trembling with fear and the movements of his tattooed wrists.  
“Frankie, calm down,” Jamia muttered out of the side of her mouth, gripping the layers of her satin dress with white-knuckled claws. It was hard to take her advice when her face was as pale as the white-hot sun above them and he knew she was just as scared—if not more so—as he was. Despite that, he calmed his hands, instead clenching and unclenching them in the alternating fabrics of his torn jeans and waist-tied flannel.  
The doors, with an almighty creak, journeyed outward like a butterfly unfurling its wings and Frank and Jamia, exchanging an uneasy look, foraged in, their heads bowed in deference. He’d never seen God before. Of course, he had become aware of His existence, being that He commanded the ranks of angels Frank was a part of. He was nothing like what the humans worshiped, though, or so Frank heard; God was more of a mighty leader than a formless, omniscient entity or a kind-faced man atop a throne of clouds. Nevertheless, despite God’s relative molecular similarity to them, Frank knew that he and Jamia could be vaporized without a second thought, and God was not rumored to be a gentle individual. The real one wasn’t, anyways.  
The hall had no torches or lamps, only stained-glass windows that cast the stone walls and marble floors with dapples of color and rainbows. Marble statues stared eerily at the two angels processing down the hall, and Frank’s nervousness grew palpable, his palms perspiring with sweat. He thought he heard Jamia mutter a quick prayer, which was ironic because the only deity that would receive it was who they were about to meet.  
An enormous throne loomed before them. Frank had gone to Washington, D.C. on his first regulated expedition to Earth, and he couldn’t help but compare this monolithic structure to the Lincoln Memorial, a great feat of architecture Frank had been awestruck by. It suddenly seemed microscopic in the face of the colossal chair. At least on Earth, though, a limestone president occupied the seat instead of this anxiously empty space.  
Jamia dropped to the ground in a low curtsy, her skirts sweeping the floor, and a flash of her brown eyes reminded Frank to do the same. He fell to his knees, bowing in a groveling way that he hoped wasn’t overly subservient. Mikolas had merely told them before their entrance to pay their leader the respect he deserved, which to Frank was everything. Here he was, a bastard dead with no life lived, doomed to an eternity with no recollection of who he was, and God had still chosen him to be an angel.  
Frank heard an awe-inspired gasp—Jamia must have lifted her head and gazed upon the majesty that was the angels’ ruler. He quickly inclined his neck, and a word slipped past his pink, trembling lips as his eyes were blessed with the most fearsome being he’d ever faced: “God?”  
He shook His head, brown curls bouncing on His shoulders. “Please, that makes me feel old. Call me Ray.”  
Ray raised his hand, signaling them to rise to their feet, and Frank hopped to attention, staring openmouthed at the angel in front of him. “Don’t be afraid,” he smiled gently, and Frank gingerly echoed the expression, his gaze full of power and reverence. “I am merely the First angel, no greater than you but in terms of experience.”  
Frank tried to relax, and he could see Jamia attempting the same. The last thing he wanted to do was disrespect the power in front of him. “I suppose you are wondering why you’ve been summoned,” Ray said after a moment of silence. Jamia, looking at Frank’s hesitant expression, stepped forward meekly.  
“Yes. Mikolas told us you wanted us, but he could not say the reason.”  
“Good. Following orders as usual,” Ray smiled to himself, then fixed the two with a surprisingly piercing brown gaze, causing Frank’s stomach to flop around in his abdomen. “Now, Jamia,” he began, sliding his eyes over to the female angel—Frank sighed in relief; Ray’s gaze had felt like two iron stokers burning through his skull— “you have always been an asset to our cause. You make sense for this case. Your track record is spotless, and it is of the gravest importance that it remains so; we cannot afford a mishap. Frank, however,” Ray turned to him, and he felt his unbeating heart leap in fear, “you pose an issue.”  
“I know—D.C. was an anomaly, sir!” Frank burst out, referencing his first—and failed—mission. Sometime during the Dark Ages, the angels, who once lounged in relative peace in their beds of sunlight, found Earth being pillaged by monsters and creatures that did not belong in the gentle Third Realm. As creatures of order, ashamed at how they had let Earth go to hell, they ordered angels to destroy the unnatural threats to humanity, which had burst through the millennia-old gates sealing each realm closed. Now and again their power would flicker, allowing a desperate creature into the Realm of Life seeking human blood. New angels—hatchlings, they called them—were often sent out on less-strenuous expeditions to reacquaint themselves with Earth and dispose of lesser beings. Frank and his partner had narrowly missed eliminating a lower-tier demon from the Realm directly beneath due to a human night guard taking them by surprise.  
“D.C. is not the issue.” His stomach settled, but it was only momentary, for Ray’s face was still twisted in concern. “What occurred there—how that demon escaped—was not your fault,” Ray sighed, running a hand over his face, and he suddenly looked very tired. “Mikolas is your greatest defender; he trusts you in the utmost, and that is enough for me to consider sending you on this mission. But your…youth, your inexperience, may make me regret that. This mission is one that absolutely cannot be compromised.”  
Burning with embarrassment, Frank bowed his head. He wanted nothing more than to prove himself amongst the souls that had earned their places in heaven—perhaps a mission of this magnitude would be a step towards that. But he wasn’t going to question Ray, not when it was possible his failure would result in catastrophe. Not when Ray’s word was, well, the word of God. “I understand, Ray.”  
But Jamia was braver than he. “That’s ridiculous,” she piped up, and Frank looked at her with an expression of fearful wonder. Talking back to God was no small feat. Her face was flushed from the neck and her eyes were wide, growing more so as Ray’s expression darkened. “I, um, mean that with the greatest respect, sir,” she hurried on. “Frank—how is he supposed to get his start if we do not give him experience? Give him a chance; I’ve never seen anyone with more passion, more desire to do the right thing. When push comes to shove, I share Mikolas’s faith that Frank is up to the task. For whatever it’s worth.”  
Frank could have kissed her then, with her face upturned to bask in the light of a scornful god.  
Ray considered for a moment. “Your opinion is valuable to me, Jamia,” he thought aloud. “You are seasoned and have been paired with many angels, many of whom you’ve reported as inadequate. I trust that you would tell me if sending Frank in would be a mistake.”  
“Of course I would, sir.”  
Ray shook his head, fixing his gaze on Frank. “Perhaps it’s against my better judgment to allow you custody of this quest, Frank, but your friend here has swayed me.” It took everything in him not to wrap Jamia in a fierce hug, and with a sly glance he conveyed his intentions of doing just that when they left the cathedral-like room. “Jamia and Frank, I am bestowing upon you the duty of killing the Fallen angel Gennadois.”  
Jamia sucked in a breath, but the name meant nothing to Frank. “Gennadois Gennadois? As in, Gennadois the Great? Conqueror of Anatolia?” she whispered, all the heat from her outburst draining away and leaving her face as pale as it was in the harsh white sun.  
“The very same,” Ray huffed, anger buffeting the two in an ember-scented wave.  
“Great God, he’s in every tome and history book on early empires there is,” Jamia murmured in awe. “He’s a Fallen?”  
“Indeed, he is. I sent for him personally, but his reality is not as great as his theory. Gennadois is, to put it bluntly, a monster. His expulsion from our ranks was for good reason, and a hard decision for his devoted brother to make. More recently however, within the past few hundred years, he has posed many…issues for us. My respect for Mikolas, his brother, and the trouble it would take to destroy him have impeded me from implementing this mission.  
“However, circumstances have shifted. A recent assignment, that of disbanding a London-area nest of inhuman creatures—Fallen, demons, scorned Fae and such—, went terribly wrong. The bastard killed three of our best operatives, and the survivors wisely chose to flee. Gennadois is the longest-lived Fallen on our record—nearly 2,500 years old—and the power he holds in his mutated soul is untested. Even I am unsure of its scale.”  
“I thought Fallen only lasted a couple hundred years, max,” Frank frowned. Mikolas had taught him that the chaos from the ever-changing pulses of humanity would drive them insane as it would do to pure angels. “This guy’s gotta be, what, a thousand, two thousand years old?”  
“He has proven…resistant to the whims of the Earth. The specifics of why he’s prevailed for so long are unimportant,” Ray snapped. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk about this Fallen for any longer than he had to—whatever Gennadois had done to be ousted from his throne of clouds must have been horrendous. “Our ground sources tell us that he’s still in London—after all, with our attempt so heroically failed, he has no reason to relocate. He is taunting me.”  
Frank exchanged a look with Jamia, who widens her eyes and shrugs slightly. “We should set off right away, then. It seems you want this bastard dead quickly, so we will do our best,” she piped up, jerking Ray out of the thoughts that had turned his chocolate eyes black.  
“Good luck.”  
“I hope we won’t need it,” Frank smiled weakly, and Ray met his gaze with an intensely serious expression.  
“You will,” he said gravely, and Frank’s heart stammered. “You know the way to the heaven-sanctioned gate—one of its Earthly matches is within Buckingham Palace. On your return, look for the Royal Guard Ebenezer; he will unlock the portal. Until then, though: Godspeed, angels.”


End file.
